So it looks as though it's going to be one of those days, at work....slower than death. Did, in fact, receive the message that you called, but got it pretty late, and of course forgot to call you back on Sunday. I imagine it had something to do with the work you had in mind for me.

So did you manage to have a good Thanksgiving?

As for me, I went over and visited with Chris Reed and Lyzbeth for a short time before meeting-up with the folks, to go eat at the White Tiger, a new incarnation in an old restaurant location at 3rd & Mass Av NE. It has been everything from Man In The Green Hat to Cafe Capri, where I used to deliver pizza to Bangcok Orchid to its present moniker...

Tim

TYPE IN A SUBJECT HEADING IF FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN TO SYNCHRONIZE, oops, sorry for the shouting that this ALL CAPS typing infers, but as I was saying, than to synchronize with all the other notes lining the mailboxed and defrocked worlds of chat and the chatted on my hard drive and yourn.

Civilized manhood truly soaks up the free time. It’s a good thing in the long term if I can fake having plenty of it, time that is, not civilized manhood. Maybe I’ve got that mixed up. Depends on which side of the clock you’re standing behind and whose civilization we’re fighting for…

Shared a pretty decent meal and some idle conversation to make Thanksgiving par for a small group of bogeys that we've reluctantly become. Epstein came over (I hadn't seen him since your birthday bash at the IRISH TIMES a few marches ago), and we plus Allie and an old college chum of BB's named Kevin Kelly burst our collective guts next door. I'd churned together a rather nifty pineapple dressing which Bob stuffed into his 12 pound turkey to complement the quite meaty well-received crab casserole I almost finished up for breakfast this morning. To top it all off Blum served pumpkin pie and whipped cream he'd mashed together from scratch, yes, from scratch both the pie and the whip, including a superb flakier than storebought crust. And I don't even like pumpkin pie, but Bob's is the best I can imagine. I think somebody cracked a pilgrim joke. A few Ben Franklin fuck and fart proudly references. Got to love the literate crowd that breeds around Blum. A belch and a rollover. Some beer. Some wine. Some after dinner coffee. It was pure November cosmos, whimper, laugh tracks, and rust. I should have brought over one of my poinsettias to kick the table appeal up a notch, but it wasn't my call, and Blum doesn't take too kindly to suggestion, not mine anyway...

Later Epstein followed me back to the Dollhouse, hijacking my computer for the next couple of hours to web wonk before squeezing directions out of me in dogged pursuit of TRAX for hetero night, the ever evasive holiday lay, and mad rocker life at 29. I then doubled back over to Bob's for another slice of pie and a few purge scenes on the telly before yawning back out the door again, glad the holiday slurf was finally over, done with, and dutifully repackaged as recent past only a couple of crude snapshots can truly bring back to life. I should have insisted on a group fotoplasty, but in weakness of will I didn't.

I snag Sue from the airport tomorrow afternoon, early evening actually. Bob and Allie tie the gordian on December 5, Friday. Bob Dylan at the 9:30 Club later that evening. The following Monday I wobble into jury duty. Civilized manhood truly soaks up the free time. It's a good thing in the long term if I can fake having plenty of it, time that is, not civilized manhood. Maybe I've got that mixed up. Depends on which side of the clock you're standing behind and whose civilization we're fighting for...

Friday's notes were written under the influence. Starting drinking about one thirty or so in the sunny after effects of too much joy, always a reel for meforgive the stilted demagoguery, the whining, and the bitch.

Yesterday the Dollhouse gang was spent in a Australian/punk rock retro-feast. First Perry Farrell's GIFT (a crippling celebration of drug mania and rock music), then two Australian flicks. Blumstein joined Tim, Libra and I for these last two flicks: the "skinhead is stupid" (no arguments here) film called ROMPER STOMPERS where this racist gang of onionheads pretty much self-destructs after picking on some innocent Vietnamese and carry forthy until they run the gamut of such a tiny war against nothing. And from the Dollhouse vault, DOGS IN SPACE, another look at the uselessness of it all, not that ANY lifestyles, alternative, square, patriotic, fetishistic, traditional, mail order, fuddy duddy or mistletoed guarantee anything less humiliating than the chaos and oppression of fighting the nature this planet reflects. But all this energy that goes into rebellion...

You'd think by now somebody would have figured out that revolutions of the masses is a stroll in the park in peace, not some flaming pipebomb in one's own pocket. Every backyard connects to somebody else's. Youth rebellion as fashion statement. Radical man, burning man...

Mimicking medieval fashion, mimicking God. Nothing seems to change the way arrogance, greed. stupidity, and pain work their generational black magic across every demographic slice ever evolved, calculated, or found in chains on their way up, or on their way down. The rich just USUALLY have a better back-up plan. The hope of billions is a hope based on a madness only the mirror on the wall seems to hide as each of us stare into it murmuring for old time's sake, "Who is the fairest of all?"

We ordered Chinese last night from the old reliable Sechezuan House on Eighth. Been ordering from there I reckon near monthly over a satisfying 12 years of whimsy and fortune cookie analysis. There were no surprises, just good dependable eats. Managed to track into Rio Grande's on Wilson Blvd. Saturday afternoon on our way to Microcenter to play the Macintosh fiddle plus return a German translation program I bought the week before but later thought better of the expense. This is no exaggeration. Rio Grande's is the absolute finest Mex American diner I've ever experienced. A jazzy colorful place with a killer ambiance meshing art and leisure, a winning combo which lobbies the nostrils and flotillas the eyeball for days! Most excellent service staff, handpicked smiles polite to the teeth. A wolf's rack of marinated ribs, fajitas, salsa, nachos...the whole enchilada.

The funniest part was we barely touched our entrees on site, stuffed to the gills on the nacho platter, but the pedigree of the establishment is no longer a well-kept secret. I loved it!

The Pennsylvanian YAST is on the wane around these parts. Both literarily and personally. Nothing I can do about that. The speculative prowl. The beckoning howl. Strong incentives to blow off the streets and into the wind of better things I figger he is thinking. Girls in pearls beat guys on sighs as any decade can prove. Friends are like coffee for two, or nostalgia in a bag. Cost more than you'd expect, and somebody's bound to be disappointed with the flavor of the month. Meanwhile, the aphrodesiac of appearances is a one-way street no prejudice can navigate without some measure of success.

After a week on the back burner avoiding a few web problems I'm back to the grind today.

Libra's grandmother was rushed to the hospital with internal bleeding this weekend, postponing her son Richard Waller's visit to the Dollhouse planned since spring for the upcoming weekend, indefinitely. She's 90 plus, 95% blind, and won't see her regular physician until today. Get well soon, Mommy Ethel!

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Quoth the Raven

"Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant, indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take them most seriously."